The Dynamics of Internal Employee Communication Tools: Pros and Cons

The Dynamics of Internal Employee Communication Tools: Pros and Cons

Is your organization considering introducing an internal employee communication tool? Wrestling over which tool is good or bad? What are the ups and downs of using communication tool and the winning factors that will make it a success?

Looking back over the last decade, the social landscape has changed considerably beyond recognition, and our workplaces have matured to reflect this. Instant messaging (aka chat) has become an integral part and easy communication tool to share information back and forth while working together in many organizations. Let’s discuss some pros and cons of using Internal employee communication tools.

Pros

Increase productivity

How to encourage the employee to be productive? How to connect the dots? Detailed, complete, comprehensive, reply via text and email can remove misunderstandings, and create animosity between business owners, employees, and customers.

Connect remote worker

With more remote workers and decentralized models of working, clear and concise interactions are needed that are based on to-the-point directions and not the usual generic gobbledygook.

Encourage collaboration

Earlier in the traditional business model, most of the communication used to take place among the small group of employees. But now business communication technology landscape is changing. Thanks to modern technology that allows more and more people to involve in the decision-making process and collaboratively create a more strategic, thought-out and refined plan.

Channel for feedback and fresh ideas

Feedback is crucial for any company’s survival and success. What is the significance of thought or idea if it’s never expressed? A designated internal communication channel allows your employees share ideas, and helpful criticisms.

Maintain transparency

These days, people expect much greater degree of transparency from various channels of organization. What does transparency and authenticity mean? ‘Keep it real and simple’ while communicating with employees. Try to build trust by telling where the company is going, what its long-term goals are and how all the employees will be encapsulated in achieving these objectives. For this purpose you need to have a good set of internal communication tools that allow you to do this in very pain free manner.

Collect powerful data bank

Peer-to-peer communication tools allow you create a knowledge base that enables everyone- from company’s founder, CEOs to new HR interns-to search and contribute to a company-wide wiki. Discuss about sales strategies, marketing processes, policies, kitchen rules, industry news etc. The sky has no limits. A collaborative knowledge base gives employees the ownership of their work and makes sure that everyone is on the same page.

Cons

Over—sharing

It is fact that companies are struggling with to keep up with the new communication expectations of today’s employees. Sometimes, we speak without think much. We share inappropriate information. Think about a scenario- in which you hit “reply to all” or “forward” in an email conversation with you and a co-worker are discussing about derogatory behavior of a customer. Over-sharing of unnecessary information can give birth to side issues or irrelevant political or social discussions that are anyway unhelpful for organization growth.

Waste of time

Employees can spend their entire day in office gossip or rumor- mongering. Through internal communication is required, proper system should be implemented to make sure that information shared by employees is for the benefit of the organization.

Security threat

Too much communication may lead to accidental disclosure of personal or corporate data. You need to build privacy and security measures with full control over who sees your boards.

Multiple tools

Consider a situation, where marketing team of a company is using a communication tool that is integrated into their CRM. The development team is using Slack. Top management is still relying on email. Multiple communication tools can create mishaps and conflicts within groups or people.

There are just a few starting points to know the usefulness and uselessness of adopting internal communication tools at the workplace. These tools are gaining popularity, especially for enterprises that are having branches and projects scattered over a wider geographical area. However, it would not be wrong to say that advantages of internal employee communication tools outweigh disadvantages. It is much more than sharing news and connecting dots. In addition, in an organization, implementing a proper communication system, refraining from adopting lackluster time management skills, and shielding confidential or sensitive information sensibly can streamline communication from top to bottom.